Interviews
Interviews
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“I’m Very Comfortable With Repeating Ideas Until They Are Perfected”: Kristoffer Borgli on Sick of Myself
One of John Waters’s favorite movies of 2022, Sick of Myself possesses a distinctly American outlook despite being the creation of Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli. Indeed, the ego-driven, crime-ladden pursuit for fame and recognition are as present in Sick of Myself as they are in many of American trash ambassador Waters’s films. “No, it’s not Female Trouble,” wrote Waters in his Artforum blurb of the film, “but it’s just as nuts,” and the film’s overtly American satirical edge has everything to do with his decision to relocate to Los Angeles several years ago. Sick of Myself follows Signe (Kristine Thorp), a […]
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“You Alone Are Not Making Anything Happen; It’s a Collective Experience”: Julio César Cedillo (Back To One, Episode 248)
For three decades, Julio César Cedillo has been delivering authentic, nuanced, fully realized performances in films and television series such as Sicario, Cowboys and Aliens, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Narcos Mexico, and the new Netflix film Chupa, to name just a few. In this hour, he generously shares what he’s learned from being a “lunchbox actor,” doing this work he loves. He talks about why, as an actor who happens to be Mexican, his first read of a script is a “search for traps.” Through stories detailing his experiences on set, he explains why it’s better to ask for forgiveness […]
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“Self-Aware Doesn’t Work for Us”: Joe Dante on The Movie Orgy, Matinee at 30 and William Castle’s The Tingler
All of Joe Dante‘s films revolve around distinctly American paranoias—consumerism, threats to the nuclear family, suburban NIMBY sensibilities—but none feel more entrenched in a tangible era of American anxiety than Matinee. Now 30 years old, the film takes place during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, centering B-movie shlock jockey Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman, riffing big time on William Castle), who lands in a panicked Key West, Florida for a promotional screening of his radioactive new horror film Mant (half-man, half-ant, all monster!) Both enraptured and horrified by the real-world implications Woolsey’s film hints at (nuclear disfigurement, neighborhoods-turned-warzones, the […]
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“A Fear of the Freedom That You Thought You Wanted”: Saim Sadiq on Joyland
Winner of the Queer Palm at Cannes last year, writer-director Saim Sadiq’s feature debut Joyland depicts a blooming love between closeted married man Haider (Ali Junejo) and Biba (Alina Khan), a trans erotic performer who employs Haider as one of her (heretofore untrained) back-up dancers. The film chronicles the ever-shifting dynamics between Biba, Haider, his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) and their intensely patriarchal immediate family. A ban on the film in Sadiq’s native Pakistan occurred due to Joyland‘s queer explorations. In a public statement, a right-wing government pundit stated that the film was “against Pakistani values,” adding that “glamorizing transgenders […]
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“This Little Thing, That’s Like the Size of a Walnut, and the Width of Our Thumbnail, Can Do So Much.” Voice: A Special Episode of Back To One
On this special episode, we’re talking all about voice! Neda Lahidji is an actor, singer, vocal health coach, voice teacher and a certified vocal health first aider. She specializes in the voices and vocal health of actors, VO actors, and singers, including any vocal athletes in the film industry as well as directors who use their voice tremendously throughout production. She talks about the different factors that affect the voice, gives us techniques to help maintain a vocal athlete’s optimal vocal health, shares her own stories of various vocal ups and downs, explains why it’s almost all mental, and much […]
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“Sex and Sexuality Have Been Central to All of My Movies”: Gregg Araki on Restoring The Doom Generation
The tongue-in-cheek title card for The Doom Generation—“a heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki”—isn’t merely an enduring “fuck you” to homophobes. Amid a sexless and puritanical American film landscape, coupled with an equally regressive online discourse on whether sex scenes in films are ever truly necessary, the emphasis on a sexual movie by Gregg Araki, regardless of orientation, transmits a much-needed erotic jolt. Newly restored in a 4K director’s cut, with grisly moments previously nixed for an Araki-unapproved R-rated cut now restored, The Doom Generation follows a trio of heartthrobs on a road trip from hell. After a night out clubbing, teen […]
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“The Search for Images is a Search That Can Last Forever”: Agnès Godard on The Line and Nenétte et Boni
Agnès Godard films the opening sequence of her fifth collaboration (following four features and a short) with writer-director Ursula Meier, The Line (La Ligne), in static slow motion: Margaret (Stéphanie Blanchoud) hits her mother (Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi), who falls and collides against the keys of her own piano, rendering her deaf in the impacted ear. A restraining order charges the eldest daughter not to come within 200 meters of her mother—an invisible boundary she immediately ignores with abrasive attempts to make amends until her younger sister paints a literal perimeter around the house. Margaret hovers at a little hill at one end […]
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“To Shoot on the 48th Floor is a DP’s Nightmare”: DP Charlotte Bruus Christensen on Sharper
Set in a shadowy world of scam artists and grifters, Sharper follows four characters through interlocking stories set in a modern-day noir version of New York City. From Park Avenue penthouses to abandoned warehouses, director Benjamin Caron builds a dangerous world filled with betrayals and double-crosses. Justice Smith plays Tom, manager of a used bookstore. A chance meeting with Sandra (Briana Middleton) leads to Max (Sebastian Stan), a self-professed con man. Max will encounter Madeline Phillips (Julianne Moore), a wealthy widow with designs on corporate titan Richard Hobbes (John Lithgow). Sharper is the feature debut for Caron, best known for his […]
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“We Need Work That is Impossible to Describe”: Kimi Takesue on Onlookers
When I first met Kimi Takesue, I saw a flash of recognition from her that my eyes reflected. It was clear we understood something very specific about each other—being biracial is, as she said, “a particular sensibility.” Takesue’s father is Japanese American, and her mother is Italian and German; my father is Filipino American, and my mother is also German. I’ve seen this same immediate recognition disarm other half-white, half Asian Americans whose way of carrying themselves, especially when that has helped them pass in white company, suddenly loses its balance: they feel seen for what they are (and are […]
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“I Don’t Want To Know Anything. I Just Want to Listen”: The Bear Series Regular Edwin Lee Gibson (Back To One, Episode 246)
Edwin Lee Gibson’s stage career spans 40 years and over 100 U.S. and international theater productions. On television he is currently reprising his role as series regular “Ebraheim” in season 2 of FX’s hit series The Bear. On this episode, he talks about the importance of listening, “letting the character find me,” working with the late Peter Brook, cultivating a relationship with fear, how his stutter actually made him dig deeper into the study of speech, and much more. Back To One can be found wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play, and Stitcher. And if you’re […]
